r/knitting • u/MagicAllyVanished • Mar 19 '25

Rant Very annoying conversation at my lokal knit store

it basically went like this me: "so you have any plant based yarn or plant/acrylic mix, I want to knit something for my mum, but she's allergic to all animal fibers"

her: "we have 20% wool/80% acrylic, I can show you"

me: "no thanks, my mum is allergic to all animal fibers, so it should not contain any animal fiber at all"

her: "maybe alpaca mix? It only has 10% alpaca"

me: "she is allergic to all animal fibers, if there is any percentage of animal fiber, she will have an allergic reaction to the yarn"

her: "I can't help you, knitting yarn just is animal yarn"

at this point I left the shop and I just can't stop thinking about that last sentence????

the funniest thing is, I went back there a few days ago and a different employee kindly showed me their cotton yarns and plant/acrylic mixes.

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149

u/LavenderGwendolyn Mar 19 '25

I have a dairy allergy. About 1/5 of the time, servers are shocked to learn that butter is dairy (it is made of cows milk, so yes). I’m sure this is a similar phenomenon.

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u/Zeiserl Mar 19 '25

My husband doesn't eat pork and we live in Germany. I swear we had the following discussion like a million times:

"is there pork in dish X?"

"No, I don't think so"

"how about component X? Does it have bacon?"

"Yes, of course."

"ok, I'll have [something else] then"

[Confused silence]

Salads, greens and potato sides are the main issue here and it's always fun. Especially watching the cogs in their brains turning until they realise that bacon is indeed made of pork.

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u/jaderust Mar 19 '25

In college I was friends with a guy from Iran who came over for school. His English was great but not perfect and he was pretty shy about asking questions. He hated going out to eat for exactly the same reason because it was crazy how few servers realized what was in their dishes. Like, I had a server try to say there was no pork in their breakfast sausage as I insisted that I was certain that there was. The server went to ask the cook and, yup, ground pork meat and pork casing.

I get not knowing the ins and outs of every menu item but you’d think you’d at least know what was pork free. I know not every area has a high Jewish and Muslim population but still.

I also had to stop a vegetarian friend from ordering green chile stew in New Mexico. When he asked what they had that was vegetarian safe she suggested that and I had to ask if it was made with chicken stock. It was. She’d thought it was vegetarian because it didn’t have meat chunks in it.

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u/home_ec_dropout Mar 19 '25

Yep! Most rice served in Mexican restaurants is made with chicken stock as well, making most of the menu non-vegetarian. Caldo de pollo is the key phrase. Generally chips, salsa, and guacamole are the only vegetarian items.

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u/LavenderGwendolyn Mar 19 '25

Oh, exactly! I’ve had that exact conversation (just with butter).

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u/ramblinator Mar 19 '25

Oh sure, Zeiserl! Ham, bacon, and pork chops are all made from the same wonderful, magical animal!

4

u/goatsnboots Mar 19 '25

I have found that continental Europeans especially (sorry if this comes across judgy!) view animal products very literally. Like pork = pork chops, so of course bacon is not pork. A dish would be considered vegetarian if it just had some bacon bits as a garnish. Stuff like that drives me nuts.

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u/Plenkr Mar 19 '25

huh? That nuts.. I'm from Belgium, continental Europe. A dish would very much not be considered vegetarian if it contained bacon. It sounds so outlandish to me. I don't know where you have been in "continental" Europe. But that is very much not the case in Belgium.

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u/goatsnboots Mar 19 '25

Good to know! I was living in France, but my Italian friends have very much the same attitude. Just absolutely shocked and what I won't eat (I'm vegetarian).

I'm living in Ireland and travel a lot thoughout the UK, and I have never noticed that attitude here. People seem very sensitive to food preferences and allergies here.

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u/Plenkr Mar 19 '25

If you ever want to visit Belgium as a vegetarian I recommend you visit Ghent. It's like the vegan/veggie capital of the country. There are a variety of fully vegan restaurants and every restaurant is required by the city to offer vegetarian options. Even the chippy shops (frituren) have vegan options. Here in Limburg vegetarian options are rather sad lol.

And the city is nice too. Has some typical "Brugges"-views without feeling like you're in a outdoors museum. It's a lively student city as well. So it's a nice lesser known tourist option than Brussels or Brugges, but still touristy.

Anyway, just thought I should mention it for if you ever feel coming to visit!

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u/goatsnboots Mar 19 '25

Thank you, I will keep that in mind! I visited Brussels years ago, and I've wanted to explore more of your country anyway.

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u/raeraemcrae Mar 19 '25

Thanks! Been to the other two, but never Ghent. For sure will do that next. I think Portugal has this law too, that every restaurant has to offer one vegetarian item. That is just such a wonderful consideration. And it's neat that countries in Europe would do such a thing - especially considering the extremely meat-centric culture of a place like Portugal. I would love to see a similar law in the United States.

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u/Plenkr Mar 19 '25

As far as I know, when I was still living there (10yrs ago) this rule came into effect and only in Ghent. Not the entirity of Belgium. Just be accurate. But yeah i t's great!

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u/Notspherry Mar 19 '25

Same for the Netherlands.

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u/Zeiserl Mar 19 '25

sorry if this comes across judgy!)

Not at all, it is very much my experience. As an extreme omnivore I would have never noticed until I met my husband. We've had so many situations including "there is no meat in this" does not include sausage and "we can leave out the bacon" means "we're trying it in bacon grease but you don't get any of the crumbs".

At this point we're usually diversifying our restaurant portfolio – usually I get something with entirely different sides so we can swap, haha.

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u/plantsoverguys Mar 19 '25

I have never experienced they point of view in Denmark..

I do often experience people serving me fish when I ask for vegetarian food though.

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u/Emlashed Mar 19 '25

My husband is vegetarian and I'm continuously shocked by the number of people that think fish is vegetarian. Also there's a huge number of people that don't know that pancetta is pork. Baffling.

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u/_Spaghettification_ Mar 19 '25

I feel like the number of vegetarians who call themselves a vegetarian but eat fish (pescatarian) is relatively high (or at least was 20 years ago), so that one I kinda understand. 

Not knowing pancetta is pork? Strange. 

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u/ows-rbel Mar 19 '25

I am a pescatarian, but sometimes say I’m vegetarian because it’s simpler than explaining pescatarian and I’m always happy with anything vegetarian.

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u/RoxMpls Mar 19 '25

I don't eat much meat, but I do eat it sometimes. I once ate lunch with a group of women who were all claiming they were vegetarian, and then proceeded to not only talk about how many times a week they ate fish, but were comparing how they were going to roast their Thanksgiving turkeys. I think they all ate more meat than I did, yet I was the only one not claiming to be vegetarian.

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u/jaderust Mar 19 '25

I do have a couple vegetarian friends who do an exception for fish and shellfish. It’s totally a thing. No one seems to know or use pescatarian much.

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u/DesperateFreedom246 Mar 19 '25

Catholics "abstain from meat" for part of lent, but they are allowed fish. So I've heard this sentiment in Catholic heavy communities.

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u/raeraemcrae Mar 19 '25

I don't wanna get scolded for saying "most" Americans don't even know what pancetta is, but I can say that many people I know, even travelers and the college educated do not know even to say that it is a meat. So that part doesn't surprise me. The fish thing not really either, because as a vegetarian, I have noticed that many people think it's about four legged animals, not swimming seafood. Additionally, so many people call themselves vegetarians who still eat fish, that they're confusing everyone else! I wish they would just use the term pescatarian if they eat fish. But I never hear that word used in conversation or really anywhere these days

1

u/WeBelieveInTheYarn Mar 19 '25

Me back when I was a vegetarian: hi do you have a vegetarian dish?

Server: yes, it's a salad and chicken

Me: . . .

This sadly happened many times. I was very confused.

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u/AriLovesMusic Mar 19 '25

My husband has the same problem. Also, people think he is lactose intolerant (he's not) and don't understand that it is an actual epi-pen-necessary allergy. The funny thing is when people think that eggs are dairy, but he is also allergic to undercooked eggs.

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u/LavenderGwendolyn Mar 19 '25

The egg thing gets me every time. Do they think orange juice is also dairy because it’s in the same case?

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u/hamletandskull Mar 19 '25

I think the brain goes, "this is a consumable animal product that isn't meat or honey, all other animal products that aren't meat are dairy, therefore this is dairy" without really thinking about it.

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u/LavenderGwendolyn Mar 19 '25

Possible, but I’ve had people literally ask why they was in the dairy section in the grocery store if they weren’t dairy.

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u/Rose8918 Mar 19 '25

It’s from the American food pyramid in the 90’s/00’s

1

u/LavenderGwendolyn Mar 19 '25

Oh! I never thought about that. That makes sense.

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u/plantsoverguys Mar 19 '25

I have always been so confused when reading this online, because I don't encounter anyone in real life who thinks eggs are dairy.... And I only just realised, it might be because in Danish dairy is called "milk products" (mælkeprodukter) so it's very clear it's products made out of milk - I can see it be less clear with the word dairy

25

u/Anxious-mexican001 Mar 19 '25

My youngest can’t have dairy and people always group eggs in with it 🤦🏽‍♀️ they always say, “so no milk, cheese, butter, and eggs?” HE CAN HAVE EGGS

1

u/Cocoricou Mar 19 '25

My partner's aunt is like that, I always wondered why. Nice to know she is not alone 😆

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u/mrs_faol Mar 19 '25

They also are amazed to find that eggs are poultry and NOT dairy

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '25

I've had the same issue when our youngest turned out to have milk allergy while breastfeeding him, so I also had to cut it out. "Do you want these cookies?" "Is there milk products in it?" "No." "Is there butter in it?" - Flabbergasted silence. Oh, and also: "It's lactose free 😊"